Plus whatever multisphere options we have. I assume multisphering will mostly result in midrange decks, with about 2 in particular probably making a good showing. (I could be totally wrong though.)So, my assumptions holding and all decks being played equally, the meta will consist of about 17-19 decks. Not bad. Let's say 18 for analysis because it's an even number. In that case:—About 50% of decks will be composed of units levels 1-3. This is your aggro section.—About 33% of decks will use units levels 3-5 with smaller "support" units. This is your midrange section.—The remaining 17% of decks will use the "big units" from 5-9.

From this data, we can infer the following about the early Horizons meta:—Return will be great in about 50% of matches, and dead in about 17% of matches. In other words, still a great card. (Return has been confirmed for the Core Set, sorry haters.)—Assassin-style soul skills will, when perfectly executed, gain 2SP 50% of the time; 3-4SP 33% of the time; and 4-8SP 17% of the time. In other words, Assassin will be needed sometimes but a risky play in many matches.

Anyone who has more information on the core set or thoughts about the meta, let's hear it here! Information is power!

EDIT: So far, 18 cards confirmed for Refess, 20 for Lawtia, 23 for Gowen, and 30 for Falkow. I believe it's been said every sphere gets 80, and then some number of multisphere cards will fill out the core set.

Last edited by victorre on Wed Mar 19, 2014 3:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

As an inference from the Lei Sei overhaul, Far East will be a supported subtype as well, and probably Gowen Warriors. The Toromea nerf also suggests that Refess warriors will be supported in the Horizons Core set as well. I assume Big Refess, Big Red, Big Blue, and Big Lawtia are all in the core set. The Folrart Psycho Soldier Soul Skill nerf assumes that Holy Knight Lapierre will be in the core set, as that is pretty much the only file that makes use of the soul.

There is also set 14 to consider; both set 13 and set 14 are entirely in the core set. A couple of major gains from the JP versions are in undeads and barbarians, with some strong poison cards too. While the JP versions will most probably be changed significantly, you can still expect the basics to remain, so expect some new Cursed Legions units and Barbarians, with some supplements to poison.

Also, there are only 6 lvl 4 Lawtia assassins, including Reborn Astaforse and the highest level assassin is Jerry, who is lvl 5 Gowen. The meta level assassins file is a lvl 3 Aggro Lawtia rush.

Thanks for the insights, Khiruki. I'm not familiar with the most recent sets yet, since I just started playing again after hearing the Kickstarter succeeded.

On Assassins, I've seen a few decks like what you described in Folrart. I used to run an Assassins deck with Francis and Afel, which is why I assumed it'd remain a LV 3-4 build. But the new LV2-3 assassins (MARCHARE) are really strong and interesting. That said, it skews the meta even more towards aggro.

On Undeads, there seems to be a recent push towards enabling both aggro and midrange Cursed Legions decks, which is good in my mind.

On Barbarians, I still don't know how to define this deck. I've seen one that was four-color and centered around the LV5 lion, and another that used all LV2 and LV1 units. It's a really interesting tribe, and while I don't much care for how aggressively Alteil pushes tribal decks, I like this one because of how diverse it is.

Just because 50% of the file types are composed of level 1-3 cards doesn't mean 50% of the decks you will see will be level 1-3 files. Could be less, but more than likely it will be more. I think mid level fies will see the least amount of play though. Tidal wave is not in horizons which means you can cram a few level 2 units on the field against level 3 falkow and generally be safe unless a curveball cyclone comes out.

Ropey wrote:"Just to confirm, the Kickstarter Exclusive cards are planned to be Horizons legal. I believe the same applies to the new Batora set"

A quote from Rom. Wonder if this is still the case. I spose so as it would make sense. Backer would want to play their exclusive cards.

That is true, we will not remove those exclusive cards from the core set. That would be a kick in the groin to all the backers.

victorre wrote:Worthing,

Thanks for the reply. I assumed equal play of all archetypes for the purposes of analysis, but I agree the aggro decks tend to be really popular and see the most play.

Interesting note on Tidalwave. I personally use Faytis and Cyclone instead in my midrange files just because I don't like losing random grims.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on why midrange will be the least-played archetype.

A lot of mid files you are seeing right now are relying on cards like Ryu, Dilate, and Catira. We don't plan to have these three cards in the core. So falkow will be pretty faction based when it comes to mid level files (assuming mid files= files that use a lot of level 4-5 units). Pirates, mid wk, serpent, and wyverns will be around. Mercenary Nation and Beltorats are also pretty faction based and have some mid sized cards(beltorats are kinda in between a rush and mid file with the useage of so many level 3's, dyson/ainhazard , and even potential dragon kins). Lawtia will be a bit wonky as a mono sphere mid file so it will more than likely be used with falkow or gowen if they are going for mid ranged cards (urgrant is not in the core but a unit in set 14 is a mid sized lawtia/falkow unit that is 5* that is quite useful). And finally, I think the mid refess files you are seeing now with judie, miffrye, guardian, lvl5 verlaat, and other goodies will see the same amount of play as they do now.

I think we will see a lot less mid sized files since they seem to require a number of rare cards to function well against a wide variety of rush files, but they can generally do very well against big files. Assuming a lot of newer players start playing I don't think many of them will be playing mid sized files unless it relies on guardian or they backed and got obsidian dragon.

Well, I'm really sad to hear that Obsidian Dragon is necessary for the Lawtia/Gowen midrange file, since I didn't hear about the Kickstarter until a month or so after it was over. But thanks for sharing your insight on that.

On the Kickstarter cards, how much of a role do you expect they'll play in the meta? Most of them seem cool-but-niche, but the Dragon is crazy powerful and I wish I'd been around to back for him.

Finally, I don't want to turn this into an "ask Worthing about Core" thread, but it was mentioned that "most" of the multisphere cards are in Core. Does this include Proxies? In my experience, they are essential for any multisphere file that wants to go above LV3 in more than one sphere.

Thanks again for being so open with people about the new metagame, Worthing!